The oldest document connected with the history of their settlement in Britain will be found in the Synchronisms of Flann Mainistrech, compiled about the reign of Malcolm the Second, in the early part of the eleventh century. We are there told that twenty years after the battle of Ocha, the children of Erc passed over into ‘Alban’ or Scotland.[[136]] The battle of Ocha is a celebrated era in Irish chronological history, and was fought in Ireland in the year 478, which places this Irish colony in the year 498; and Tighernac the annalist, who died in 1088, is quite in accordance with this when, under the year 501, he has ‘Fergus Mor, son of Erc, held a part of Britain with the tribe of Dalriada, and died there.’[[137]] A district forming the north-east corner of Ireland, and comprising the north half of the county of Antrim, was called Dalriada. It appears to have been one of the earliest settlements of the Scots among the Picts of Ulster, and to have derived its name from its supposed founder Cairbre, surnamed ‘Righfhada’ or Riada. It lay exactly opposite the peninsula of Kintyre, from whence it was separated by a part of the Irish Channel of no greater breadth than about fourteen miles; and from this Irish district the colony of Scots, which was already Christian,[[138]] passed over and settled in Kintyre, and in the island of Isla. The earlier settlements indicated by the traditionary accounts of Nennius and Bede no doubt refer to the incursions of the Scots in the fourth century, and their temporary occupation of Britain during eight years.[[139]] The circumstances which enabled a small body of Scots to effect this settlement among the Picts cannot now be ascertained, and they appear to have extended themselves over a considerable portion of territory during the first sixty years of their kingdom, without meeting with much difficulty, during the reigns of three of their petty kings—Domangart, son of Fergus, and his two sons, Comgall and Gabran—till Brude, son of Mailchu, termed by Bede a powerful monarch, became king of the Picts, when a few years after he commenced his reign he attacked the Dalriads and drove them back to their original seat in Kintyre, slaying their king Gabran.[[140]] He was succeeded by Conall, the son of Comgall, who appears to have remained with diminished territories in Kintyre; and it was during this period, when the Scottish possessions were reduced to that part of Argyllshire which extends from the Mull of Kintyre to Loch Crinan, the whole of which was originally comprehended under the name of Kintyre, that St. Columba came over from Ireland on his mission to convert the Picts—a mission prompted possibly by the hazardous position in which the small Christian colony of the Scots was placed in close contact with the still pagan nation of the northern Picts under their powerful monarch Brude. Something like this seems to be expressed in that remarkable poem of the eleventh century, called the Prophecy of St. Berchan, where it is said of Columba—
Woe to the Cruithnigh to whom he will go eastward,
He knew the thing that is
Nor was it happy with him that an Erinach
Should be king in the east under the Cruithnigh.[[141]]
The death of Conall, son of Comgall, king of Dalriada, in the thirteenth year of his reign, is recorded by Tighernac, and he adds that a battle was fought in Kintyre, at a place called Delgon, in that year, in which his son Duncan and a large number of the tribe of Gabran were slain.[[142]] This battle seems to have been a further attack by the Picts with the view of suppressing them altogether, as the same poem thus alludes to it:—
Thirteen years altogether,
Against the hosts of the Cruithnigh, mild the illustrious.
When he died he was not king,
On Thursday in Kintyre.[[143]]